The subject matter discussed in the background section should not be assumed to be prior art merely as a result of its mention in the background section. Similarly, a problem mentioned in the background section or associated with the subject matter of the background section should not be assumed to have been previously recognized in the prior art. The subject matter in the background section merely represents different approaches, which in and of themselves may also correspond to implementations of the claimed inventions.
A web page can be made of hundreds of objects such as images, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), JavaScript (JS) modules, Flash, Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) for remote content, and the HTML code itself. The quantity, structure, and configuration of these objects can directly affect the performance of a web page. As well, there are architectural issues such as compression, cache configurations, and Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) that also affect the complexity and performance of a web page.
There are a large number of servers, networking devices, network services such as DNS, and protocols between the consumer of the web page and the source of the web page and its constituent objects. These devices can be connected using media such as copper wire, fiber optics, and wireless technologies that span a large portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Wireless technologies such as radio, microwave, infrared, Bluetooth, WiFi, WiMAX, and satellites all use the radio spectrum for digital communications. Each device, protocol, and transmission medium has its own operating characteristics, which are further complicated by distances measured in terms of latency. The characteristics of each of the many components of the system between and including the user web browser and the web page content servers may affect the overall user experience of access the web page. Thus, analyzing this user experience and improving it may be very complex.
An opportunity arises to introduce improved test procedures and technologies. More easily configured and operated tests with more accurate performance estimates can result.